And the winner of the largest BitTorrent swarm ever goes to…

BitTorrent swarm of 193,000-plus pirates beats last year's record of 171,000.

The second episode of the fourth season of, you guessed it, Game of Thrones, takes the crown.

The HBO episode generated more than 193,000 pirates simultaneously sharing the same file late Monday. Other files of the same episode were also being downloaded by the thousands—some 1.5 million downloads in all, TorrentFreak noted.

The site predicted that the record will be broken as the Game of Thrones season progresses.

"This makes the show the likely candidate to be crowned the most-downloaded TV-show at the end of the year," TorrentFreak said. The site noted that the previous swarm record was also from Game of Thrones, last year's season finale, which generated a swarm of more than 171,000 pirates on a single file.

One might think Time Warner, which owns HBO, would unleash the Motion Picture Association of America litigation dogs on the show's seeders and leechers. The US Copyright Act alone allows for up to $150,000 in damages per infringement.

But that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

During an August earnings call with investors, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes bragged about the show's massive piracy levels.

"If you go around the world, I think you're right, that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world," he said. "Now that's better than an Emmy."

David Kravets / The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper.